Having A Sick Kid For Two Weeks Stinks!

A couple of weeks ago my son was extremely sick. Actually, he was sick for two weeks. The first full week of April he was only supposed to have that Monday off for the end of Spring Break. He ended up missing every day, but Thursday, and sending him that day was a mistake. When I picked him up after his school meeting, he was white as a ghost.

Saturday morning he was supposed to compete at the Naval Academy for SeaPerch. His team had been working on their underwater robot since November. We were only there for about an hour before I had to call Fred to come get us and take us to the dr.

I felt so bad he had to miss his competition, but he couldn’t even stand up. We never should’ve gone.

The doctor we saw wasn’t his regular doctor, but he suggested a cold medicine with and antihistamine. We picked some up on the way home, and settled in for the weekend. We followed up with his regular doctor on Monday who prescribed a zpac for him. He took that Rx around 2:30, and seemed to be better until bedtime when he showed me some bumps under his chin.

I could tell they were hives, but not like I’d seen them before. I actually called the after hours doctor because I’m used to seeing hives that are more like little pin pricks all over the torso. The on call doc said to give him allergy medicine, which I had already done.

He headed to bed, and about an hour later, my older son was going to bed, and told me I needed to look at him. He had gotten worse. The hives were on his face and a couple little spots on his body.

I called the doctor back because I was getting more than a little worried. She told me to give him a second dose of the allergy medicine and if he didn’t show signs of improvement to take him to the ER. Ugh, I really wanted him better because I didn’t want to go to the ER with that poor kid. Unfortunately, an hour later, he hadn’t improved at all.

These are his elbows when we were at the ER:

We got to the hospital around 12:30. This hospital had a pediatric ER so we were in a wing set apart from the rest of it. Man alive, that hospital was huge!! We’d never been there before. They ended up taking an xray of his chest to make sure he didn’t have pneumonia. Thankfully he didn’t.

They sent us home with a steroid Rx, and told us to see the dr the next day. We got an appointment in the morning, and headed out. He ended up having an ear infection on top of everything else. Poor kid.

These are his knees the afternoon after we came home from the hospital. And this is them starting to go away. You can see the white in the middle of the hives…when they were at their worst, they were completely red.

By this time, he’d missed a week and a half of school. Every day I was getting two calls and two emails telling me my son was absent from school. I had to call and ask for homework to be put together for him. The first week of school he’d missed the last week of the quarter. The second week of school he missed was the start of the next quarter! He was missing a lot of school. I was afraid if he missed any more we’d have to get a tutor to help him catch up.

I was taking pictures of all of these hives because like I said earlier, I’d never seen anything like them before. I was afraid they’d go away or they’d lessen before we saw a dr. or specialist. I wanted it documented because I really had no idea what was going on with him. It’s such a helpless place to be as a mom.

On Wed, the day he saw the dr and got onto a new Rx for his ear infection, was his worst day with his hives. The entire time he’d been dealing with them, he was never having issues with itching. He would rub for a second and then stop. He did amazing. The last day was horrible for him. He was so uncomfortable and his entire body was covered. Before they were migrating from one spot to the next, but the last day, they covered him entirely.

Thursday he was very improved, and we were hoping he’d be rallied enough to go to the 6th grade field trip on Friday, but he just had no energy. So in two weeks he missed his SeaPerch and his 6th grade field trip. Breaks my heart for that sweet boy.

I’m happy to say, he finally went back to school after being out for two weeks! I could tell he was tired from the full day at school, but his color looked good, no coughing, and no hives! Just praying he stays healthy. We’ve got the allergist appointment on the calendar.

Have you ever dealt with an unexplained illness?